One man you’ve never heard of juices his numbers, buys followers and fake plays and is becoming the star you always dreamed of. This is how he does it.

Fake views, fake plays, fake fans, fake followers and fake friends – the mainstream music industry has long been about “buzz” over achievement, fame over success, the mere appearance of being everyone’s favorite artist over being the favorite artist of anyone.

Social media has taken the chase for the fumes of fame to a whole new level of bullshit. After washing through the commercial EDM scene (artists buying Facebook fans was exposed by several outfits last summer), faking your popularity for (presumed) profit is now firmly ensconsced in the underground House Music scene.

This is the story of what one of dance music’s fake hit tracks looks like, how much it costs, and why an artist in the tiny community of underground House Music would be willing to juice their numbers in the first place (spoiler: it’s money).

‘Boringly Ordinary’

I’d caught him red-handed committing the worst sin one can be guilty of in the underground: Louie was faking it.

In early January, I received an email from the head of a digital label. In adorably broken English, “Louie” (or so we’ll call him, for reasons that will become apparent) asked me how he could submit promos for review by 5 Magazine.

I directed him to our music submission guidelines. We get somewhere between five and six billion promos a month. Nothing about this encounter was extraordinary.

A few hours later, I received his first promo. We didn’t review it. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, disposable: a bland, mediocre Deep House track. These things are a dime a dozen these days – again, everything about this encounter was boringly ordinary.

But I noticed something strange when I Googled up the track name. And I bet you’ve noticed this too. Hitting the label’s SoundCloud page, I found that this barely average track – remarkable only in being utterly unremarkable – had somehow gotten more than 37,000 plays on SoundCloud in less than a week. Ignoring the poor quality of the track, this is a staggering number for someone of little reputation. Most of his other tracks had significantly fewer than 1,000 plays.

30,000 fake soundcloud plays

Even stranger, there were only 117 comments – a very low number for a track with so many plays.

Stranger still, most of the comments – insipid and stupid even by social media standards – came from people who do not appear to exist.

You’ve seen this before: a track with acclaim far beyond any apparent worth. You’ve followed a link to a stream and thought, “How is this even possible? Am I missing something? Did I jump the gun? How can so many people like something so ordinary?”

Louie, I believed, was purchasing plays, to gin up some coverage and buy his way into overnight success. He’s not alone. Desperate to make an impression in an environment in which hundreds of digital EPs are released every week, labels are increasingly turning toward any method available to make themselves heard above the racket – even the skeezy, slimey, spammy world of buying plays and comments.

I’m not a naif about such things – I’ve watched several artists (and one artist’s significant other) benefit from massive but temporary spikes in their Twitter and Facebook followers within a very compressed time period. “Buying” the appearance of popularity has become something of a low-key epidemic in dance music, like the mysterious appearance and equally sudden disappearance of Uggs and the word “Hella” from the American vocabulary.

But (and here’s where I am naive), I didn’t think this would extend beyond the reaches of EDM madness into the underground. Nor did I have any idea what a “fake” hit song would look like. Now I do.

This Is What A Fake Dance Hit Looks Like

Looking through the tabs of the 30k+ play track, the first thing I noticed was the total anonymity of the people who had favorited it. They have made-up names and stolen pictures, but they rarely match up. These are what SoundCloud bots look like:

Fake SoundCloud Followers

The usernames and “real names” don’t make sense, but on the surface they seem so ordinary that you wouldn’t notice anything amiss if you were casually skimming down a list of them. “Annie French” has a username of “Max-Sherrill”. “Bruce-Horne” is “Tracy Lane”. A pyromaniac named “Lillian” is better known as “Bernard Harper” to her friends. There are literally thousands of these. And they all like exactly the same tracks (none of the “likes” in the picture are for the track Louie sent me, but I don’t feel much need to go out of my way to protect them than with more than a very slight blur):

Fake SoundCloud Favorites and Likes

Most of the comments are hilariously banal, but a few do stand out. You have to wonder what Louie thinks, knowing that comments like “YOU ARE A GOD” come from imaginary fans he’s paid for:

Fake SoundCloud Comments

Most of them are like this. (Louie deleted this track after I contacted him about this story, so the comments are all gone; all of these were preserved via screenshots. He also renamed his account.)

Fake Plays, Real Dollars

It’s pretty obvious what Louie was doing: he’d bought fake plays and fake followers. But why would someone do this? After leafing through hundreds of followers and compiling these screenshots, I contacted Louie by email with my evidence.

His first reply consisted of a sheaf of screenshots of his own – his tracks prominently displayed on the front page of Beatport, Traxsource and other sites, along with charts and reviews. It seemed irrelevant to me at the time – but pay attention. Louie’s scrapbook of press clippings is more relevant than you know.

After reiterating my questions, I was surprised when Louie brazenly admitted that everything implied above is, in fact, true. He is paying for plays. His fans are imaginary. Sadly, he is not a god.

You have noticed that I’m not revealing Louie’s real name. I’m fairly certain you’ve never heard of him. I’m hopeful, based upon listening to his music, that you never will. In exchange for omitting all reference to his name and label from this story, he agreed to talk in detail about his strategy of gaming SoundCloud, and then manipulating others – digital stores, DJs, even simple fans – with his fake popularity.

Don’t misunderstand me: the temptation to “name and shame” was strong. An early draft of this story (seen by my partner and a few other people) excoriated the label and ripped its fame-hungry owner “Louie” to pieces. I’d caught him red-handed committing the worst sin one can be guilty of in the underground: Louie was faking it.

But when every early reader’s response was, “Wait, who is this guy again?” – well, that tells you something. I don’t know if the story’s “bigger” than a single SoundCloud Superstar or a Beatport One Week Wonder named Louie. But the story is at least different, and with Louie’s cooperation, I was able to affix hard numbers to what this kind of ephemeral (but, he would argue, very effective) fake popularity will cost.

This is “Louie’s” actual level of popularity – tracks that were put up months before he began gaming the SoundCloud system.

This Is What A Fake Dance Hit Costs

People see you’re popular, they believe you’re popular, and eager as we all are to prop up a winner, you therefore BECOME popular. This also existed before the dawn of the internet – it was called The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Louie told me that he artificially generated “20,000 plays” (I believe it was more) by paying for a service which he identifies as Cloud-Dominator. This gives him his alloted number of fake plays and “automatic follow/unfollow” from the bots, thereby inflating his number of followers.

Louie paid $45 for those 20,000 plays; for the comments (purchased separately to make the entire thing look legit to the un-jaundiced eye), Louie paid €40, which is approximately $53.

This puts the price of SoundCloud Deep House dominance at a scant $100 per track.

But why? I mean, I’m sure that’s impressive to his mom, but who really cares about Louie and 30,000 fake plays of a track that even real people that listen to it, like me, will immediately forget about? Kristina Weise from SoundCloud told me by email that the company believes that “Illegitimately boosting one’s follower numbers offers no long-term benefits.”

But to hear Louie tell it: it does.

This Is What A Fake Dance Hit Can Do For You

This is where Louie was most helpful. The first effect of juicing his stats, he claims, nets him approximately “10 [to] 20 real people” per day that begin following his SoundCloud page as a result of artificially inflating his playcount to such a grotesque level.

These are people who see the popularity of his tracks, go through the same process I did in wondering how such a thing was possible, but inevitably shrug and sign on as a follower of Louie, assuming that where there’s light, there must be heat as well.

But – and this is the most interesting part of his strategy, for there is a method to his madness – Louie also claims there’s a financial dimension. “The track with 37,000 plays today [is] in the Top 100 [on] Beatport” he says, as well as being in “the Top 100 Beatport deep house tracks at #11.”

And indeed, many of the tracks that he juiced with fake SoundCloud plays were later featured prominently on the front pages of both Beatport and Traxsource – a highly coveted source of promotion for a digital label.

They’ve also been reviewed and given notice by multiple websites and publications (hence his fondness for his scrapbook of press clippings he showed me after our initial contact).

Louie didn’t pay Traxsource, or Beatport, or any of those blogs or magazines for coverage. He paid Cloud-Dominator. All of these knock-on, indirect benefits likely add up to far more than $100 worth of free advertising – a positive return on his paid-for SoundCloud dominance.

Louie’s records on the front page of Traxsource and Beatport, which he attributes to having bought tens of thousands of SoundCloud plays.

So it’s all about that mythical social media “magic”. People see you’re popular, they believe you’re popular, and eager as we all are to prop up a winner, you therefore BECOME popular. Louie’s $100 for pumping up the stats on his underground House track can probably be scaled up to the thousands or tens of thousands for EDM and other music genres (some of the bots following Louie also follow dubstep and even jazz musicians. Eclectic tastes, these bots have.)

Pay $100 on one end, get $100 (or more) back on the other, and hopefully build toward the biggest payoff of all – the day when your legitimate fans outweigh the legion of robots following you.

This entire technique was manipulated in the early days of MySpace and YouTube, but it also existed before the dawn of the internet. Back then it was called The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Of Payola and Steroids

SoundCloud claimed 18 million registered users back in Forbes in August 2012. While bots and the sleazy services that sell access to them plague every online service, some people will view this issue as one which is SoundCloud’s responsibility. And they do have a healthy self-interest in ensuring that the little numbers next to the “play”, “heart” and “quotebubble” icons mean exactly what they say they mean.

This article is a sterling endorsement for many of the services brokering fake plays and fake followers. They do exactly what they say they will: inflate plays and gain followers in an at least somewhat under-the-radar manner. I’ve seen it. I’ve just showed it to you. And that’s a problem for SoundCloud and for those in the music industry who ascribe any integrity to those little numbers: it’s cheap, and if you can afford it, or expect to make a return on your investment on the backend, as Louie does, there doesn’t seem to be any risk to it at all.

For the record, Kristina Weise told me that SoundCloud is

continually working on the reduction and the detection of fake accounts. When we have been made aware of certain illegitimate activities like fake accounts or purchasing followers, we deal with this in accordance with our Terms of Use. Offering and using paid promotion services or other means to artificially increase play-count, add followers or to misrepresent the popularity of content on the platform, is contrary to our TOS. Any user found to be using or offering these services risks having his/her account terminated.

But it’s been over 3 months since I first stumbled across Louie’s tracks. None of the incredibly obvious bots I identify here have been deleted. In fact, all of them have been used several more times to leave inane comments and favorite tracks by Louie’s fellow clients. (Some may worry that I’m listing the names of said shady services here. Rest assured, all of them appear prominently in Google searches for related keywords. They’re not hard to find.)

And should SoundCloud develop a more effective counter against botting and what we might as well coin as “playcount fraud”, they’d have an unusual ally.

“SoundCloud should close many accounts,” Louie says, including “top DJs and producers [with] premium accounts for promoting like this. The visibility in the web jungle is very difficult.”

For Louie, this is simply a marketing plan. And truthfully, he has history on his side, though he may not know it. For much of the last sixty years, in form if not procedure, this is exactly how records were promoted. Labels in the mainstream music industry bribed program directors at American radio stations to “break” songs of their choosing. They called it “payola“. In the 1950s, there were Congressional hearings; radio DJs found guilty of accepting cash for play were ruined.

Payola was banned but the practice continued to flourish into the last decade. Read for instance, Eric Boehlert’s excellent series on the more elegant system of payoffs that flourished after the famous payola hearings of the ’50s. All of Boehlert’s allegations about “independent record promoters” were proven true, again attracting the attention of Congress.

Payola consists of giving money or benefits to mediators to make songs appear more popular than they are. The songs then become popular through radio’s free exposure. Louie’s ultra-modern form of payola eliminates any benefit to the operator (in this case, SoundCloud), but the effect is the same: to make you believe that this “boringly ordinary” track is an underground clubland sensation – and thereby make it one.

The acts that benefited from payola in Boehlert’s exposé were multiplatinum groups like U2 and Destiny’s Child. This isn’t Lady Gaga or even the Swedish House Mafia. It’s just Louie, a fairly average producer making fairly average underground House Music which probably sells an average of a hundred or so copies per release.

It’s sad that people would go to such lengths over such a tiny sip of success. But Louie feels he has little choice. Each week, hundreds of EPs flood digital stores, and he feels certain that many of them are deploying the same sleazy “marketing” tactics I caught him using. There’s no way of knowing, of course, how many artists are juicing up their stats the way Louie is, but I’m less interested in verification than I am in understanding. It has some kind of creepy parallel to Lance Armstrong and the steroid debate plaguing cycling and other sports: if you’re certain everyone else is doing it, you’d be a fool not to.

I posed that metaphor to Louie, but he didn’t seem to get it. Language problems. But I’m pretty sure that he’d agree. As his legitimate SoundCloud followers inch upward, as his tracks break into the absurd sales charts at digital stores that emphasize chart position over the pathetic number of units sold (after all, “#1 Track!” sounds much better than “100 Copies Sold Worldwide!”), he feels vindicated. It’s worth it.

This is a great article and I’m surprised to see no comments… As a worldwide indie label we absolutely refuse such services, but we know our ‘competitors’ (if we can call them that) all inflate. Truth be told our music is REALLY awesome and some of our artists are legendary in their own right, but our label has always been a part time thing so we don’t put as much effort into real promo. I do bet though that if we could remove all of these “fakers” from the spotlight, true labels like us (NexGen Music) visibility would probably be greater that it is today. Let’s remove the noise and get rid of the fakers!!! http://nexgenmusicgroup.com / http://soundcloud.com/nexgenrecs

Jack Daniels Old Number 7

Seriously though, the fake profiles on soundcloud are getting out of hand.

Anonymous

What happen to integrity and transparency?

http://tribeofscribes.wordpress.com/ Max Crowe Screenwriter

Hold up a dollar bill and try to look through it… that’s what happened to the integrity of transparency…

http://koestiek.tumblr.com Michel Labruyere

Hi there! I’ve been receiving also fake comments, likes, reposts from people I didn’t even know or played my tracks. I really, really don’t like this, it’s not taking an artist music seriously and denying the chance to get some proper feedback on his/her tracks.

ArtHowardAtNight

THEORY: The author points out the same fake followers like all the same tracks. Maybe you get thrown a free listen, like or comment by the bots now to make their choices seem more organic? “Joe Schmoe doesn’t only like the tracks with 60,000 plays, but this random one with 12 plays, also.” Makes the bots appear more real.

What happens if a really talented group does this after a year of not receiving any public interest? I mean this in a “brilliant but cancelled” kind of sense where the ratings just aren’t there. Before Moby Dick was published the book was rejected over and over again by many publishing companies. Could this mean that some talented artists will otherwise go unknown if they don’t try, with this method, to push themselves above the noise and into the ears into a real audience of listeners? The bottom line is that talented artists can’t survive without a fan base. If they aren’t getting a response from their, for the sake of argument, brilliant music then why should this method, in such an intense, be frowned upon? It may be silly, but it may be the only shot some real artists have in the industry today. What do you guys think?

Chino Rivera

read MORGAN post below
make sense,yours and hers,
and MA$$$
adios
1

LawFirmGirlieSydney

love her post chino.
truer words never spoken.
Lawyers claim to have won”as advertise many law cases,yet why?”Simple for new “fans”of the work” for the law office,more marketing/better/more clients! trust me i work in a firm so i know.
Nothing wrong with this at all. i think it’s smart.End of the day as Morgan say it come down to a lil bit o luck,and good record.
night.

Shirikatsu

A bit late to the party but I honestly agree. I personally think it’s more a result of more cultural stupidity than anything else where the lame commercial shit gets exponentially more publicised and trends catch on (which imo should not happen in music, producers should be crafting their own version of their own music, not trying to slot their track into some pre-defined genre). These trends end up spawning hundreds of copycat producers in a bid to light their own popularity fire on the back of this huge bandwagon and what happens is that real musicians get their content completely drowned out because there is such mass musical blindness that people can be made to believe that they like something.

As a producer myself I solely enjoy just making the music and being over the moon with even a couple new plays or comments because I just want people to enjoy my stuff. That’s why I used to frown upon the act of people trying to publicise themselves on other people’s track or youtube comments which now seems less of a sin when the music industry has become what it is now.

Although I believe trying to accelerate popularity by leaving your mark all over other people’s track and youtube comments becomes less a benign act of just trying to be heard but now more an obsession for the self-gratifying numbers and possibly even financial gain from which, now has become a game that has nothing to do with actually enjoying making music but more a sell-out act of selfish pursuit.

terrymatthew

Every few weeks I’m being alerted of “suspicious” commenting on this article and finding 3 or 4 new commenters, all with the same IP address vigorously agreeing with each other that buying shit is the way of the future. At this point, the humans in the industry are still stupider than the bots. Thank God.

nicholas charles tenaglia

this is outrageous! i knew something sketchy was going on with some of these idiotic and generalized comments. i’m on soundcloud and i have gotten emails about buying plays. thank god i never did it. i make music strictly as a hobby and i hoped that by putting it on soundcloud i could get real feedback so that i get better at the craft. i get excited if i even get 10-20 people to listen to my stuff. now this whole thing seems tainted. it’s a little depressing, but on the other hand, now i don’t have to wonder why these crappy artists are getting so much more attention. the idea of soundcloud is amazing. being able to share music with people all over the world and listen to unknown artists is great. I’m sure soundcloud profits indirectly from these inflated numbers too. eventually they will get bought out by twitter/fb for a ton of money and the reason is that they show such high numbers of users.
however i came across this article because i was looking for a way to search for songs that have few plays instead of many. these are the most fun to listen to. does anyone know how to do this? after reading this i really want to know!

Forrest

Is it possible for someone to apply this shit to your tracks without knowing? I recently put up a track, and in a week it got 120 plays. For me, thats a pretty big number, but I dont think that is what was out of the ordinary. No, what caught my attention was how my plays are now at 500 as of this morning, and counting. I believe now its at 541? And it keeps going. None of my other tracks are getting hits. The track in question is ONLY getting plays, and I am not getting any new followers. What the hell is going on with my track?!

Dimitri

Can you please share your track? hahah

Dave

Well, this is a very interesting article. I’m not sure how bad of a thing it is too buy plays really, but it does seem a little pointless. Life is about status for most people I guess. They just want to appear great. Same reason why people buy nice clothes, nice cars etc. Why not buy some plays to go along with your wanted persona?

I don’t think it’s likely someone will get famous from it, but if they do then good for them. That would just go to show how easily people are led. Maybe it makes business harder for record labels, but that doesn’t really matter either. You don’t even need labels anymore anyway.

I’ve taken the opposite approach the last few years, giving away my tracks, just let them have it. A lot of the time, people will just feel a compulsive urge to compensate you, or find you a gig. I’ve got a few thousand plays on some tracks. Not like 80,000 or anything gigantic, but enough you know? Also I was on soundcloud back in the old days, when you could get tons of plays simply by playing good music and being polite to people.

People should focus less on being famous, or appearing to be. Should focus more on staying a working musician, and producing music that will last the test of time. But hey, the business man in me says if you can make money off of fools trying to get famous quick, why not? There’s a sucker born every minute.

EMME♥ monica olivera

I’m a real musician. With true passion and integrity. I find it extremely hard to now stand out among the fake buyers and the fake numbers, and their “real dollars”. The social media frenzy and the desire for EVERYONE to be “popular” has actually bogged down the field for real artistry. And for the most part…competition is no longer about talent. It’s about these absurd numbers and “buzzes.” With so much going on, how can the audience actually find the REAL guys…where is the truth among so many lies ? *SIGH*

Morgan Farantino-Clark

HAS ZERO TO DO WITH lie etc.
has EVERYTHING buying plays or not, to do with MARKETING YOURSELF,and that is part of marketing since sixties. My dad knew this he say laughing still since he retire in radio.he seen how mgr.,to artist will go UP TO THE STATION offer to play a track “never for free,for marketing purpose dollars period.simple as that it is a business,as few wise folks here are saying,about MARKETING same as any field of work,simple as that.i say more below about my cuz,now interviewing for her “songs”with major label who reach her and she again sold them NOT on they said views,nope.her “song,the arrangement,radio-ready sound,and her marketing,of THAT 1 song,did it.”we are happy for her.”
i say much more below.
Good luck
#LIFE2SHORTNot2MarketYourself and that is what it come down to marketing,a “great product.”nothing wrong with that,a lie,you might say,but for my cousin and her partner,it was premise on the song,and not the amount of plays.and a “touch of good luck,in the right place,at the right time.”

night all

Chino Rivera

Incredible post.
icam Morgan yep.
adios
1

LawFirmGirlieSydney

You should sometimes re-post that morgan.i feel same way.I know how”good marketing works.”I work at law firms a long time. Lawyers claim to have won”as advertise many law cases,yet why?”Simple for new “fans”of the work” for the law office,more marketing, better/more clients! trust me i work in a firm so i know. Nothing wrong with this at all. i think it’s smart.End of the day as Morgan say it come down to a lil bit o luck,and good record. I would not care if you have 100 plays,or 10 in only 1 week,if i love your song,and it somehow make it to my “major”label,i will call you,arrange a sit-down contractual meet and greet.simple as that.Good luck to you all artist.#NeverGiveup Morgan is right,all about marketing a”great product.”I see lawyers do it all the time.
.Good night.

http://tribeofscribes.wordpress.com/ Max Crowe Screenwriter

Just keep being real and eventually the fakes will fall away to reveal the true stars… Keep it up, Stay the course…

waz 312

respect Emme!

Gabe

Great article. This kind of thing drives me crazy, the only thing worse imho is use of ghost producers.

http://Soundcloud.com/massordie Ma$$

This is a business. Remember that.

Chino Rivera

you’re right, and it has a lil bit of luck to do wit it too.I see nothing wrong with
buying plays,and or fans who cares,it come down to the actual “song”being
hopefully discovered,who doesn’t know that smh.this article don’t make sens to me at all.
Someone hating,and i will save my comment for FB just in case it get deleted,like Morgan
earlier great post.

Morgan comment on this page is right,best IMO,(see her post above)
but she also post one after yours Ma$$

all about Marketing, Promotion,and soundcloud is good at that imo, many lawyers,
“and others market one’s self…”People either gotz 2 learn the game,keep up or be left behind
peace
1

http://tribeofscribes.wordpress.com/ Max Crowe Screenwriter

Yeah, one where advancing ones success should come from credits earned, not pre-fadricated to give the visual of skill and talent… This hurts those who earn their credz through real work and real plays and real period…

Andrew Wires

Great article first of all. Soundcloud is simply broken. For those of you who say ‘what’s the big deal’ allow me to elaborate. I don’t know if things were as bad when it was published as they are now. It appears bots and general cheating have taken over soundcloud. It’s January 2015 as I write these lines and most of the ‘trending’ categories on soundcloud feature songs that fit the description of ‘Louis’ song. You’ll see bad to mediocre songs with 100k + plays with less comments than in songs with 500 plays. Artists with 10 or more ‘succesful’ songs with millions of plays and only 50 followers. Songs with millions of plays on soundcloud and only hundreds of views on youtube.
The bot thing is only the tip of the iceberg. There are various ways to cheat in soundcloud. Artists that ‘like’ and comment on thousands of songs to get back some likes and comments as a form of reciprocacy. Fake ‘fan’ accounts that like and comment on everything in drones and when you see their profile they only have one specific song reposted. Or tell you to check ‘their friend’s song’. And I’m sure there are many more ways.

Why is that harmful? Because it defeats the whole purpose of soundcloud and it blocks talented artists to emerge. Unless you are a world known act, the only way for you to be heard is to be featured in the trending category of your genre. That’s the only way people will find you in there. When a new song is uploaded, if it gets enough views on its first days it will go in ‘trending’ and from there more people will discover it. Which is near impossible because of the cheaters and their thousands of fake views. Your song gets pushed down and down and it never gets featured.
Soundcloud is simply broken by definition. It doesn’t have any mechanisms to promote artists. You can be the next Mozart and upload a masterpiece. If you leave it as it is, it will never be heard by anyone. Noone will ever know about it. All you can do about it is post and repost it on various so called ‘groups’ of soundcloud. That will net you tens of plays… a week. Another thing is to follow people, a lot of them, in the hopes that they’ll check you out and maybe listen to your songs. Neither of them is efficient and will not get you very far. Soundcloud advises you to listen to other people’s songs and engage with them so they’ll engage with you, but that is the least efficient way. Give and receive? A like for a like and a comment for a comment? Really? They won’t even listen to your songs. I was complimented yesterday about my vocals in an instrumental piece(no vocals). What you want is fans. Real people that will engage with you IF they like what they hear. Actual listeners of music. But soundcloud is not designed to get you in touch with them.
It’s not designed for them really. It doesn’t give them incentives to be in it. If they make a comment, it can’t be liked. They can’t post statuses, their photos can’t be liked or commented on. There is no reward system for them to stay. They don’t even discover new music, which is the motto of soundcloud. 99% of what they see featured are songs of well known artists which they knew already, and the crappy songs of the cheaters which they don’t like. And when they do like something, soundcloud doesn’t suggest similar songs/artists. So why would they stay?
Soundcloud is broken. And it’s a shame because it could really help struggling artists with talent. They need to find ways to bring real listeners to the page, severely limit cheating and find ways to help artists with talent to emerge

Lahcen

So after this long ass article, what’s your plan? How do I get plays, comments, fans according to you? give me the alternative

ttaev

exposure is exposure,

waz 312

what really irks me is that industry types and most people buy into this.
no fake followers = no fake/real plays = nobody is ever going to even try to take your art seriously no matter how good or substandard it might be = you start to believe the latter must be true then